Clearwire: Just give us one more year on LTE

We’ll have to wait another year for the LTE network Clearwire has long been promising. Clearwire CEO Erik Prusch said the WiMAX carrier’s first batch of 5,000 LTE cell sites will be switched by June 2013, FierceWireless reported.

The launch almost seems perfectly timed to coincide with the completion of primary investor and customer Sprint’s own LTE rollout, which will start this summer and ramp up throughout 2013. Sprint’s initial LTE network won’t be the rip roaring ultra-fast mobile broadband systems Verizon Wireless and AT&T have deployed in most areas. Rather, Sprint will only have half the capacity of its competitors, so it’s counting on Clearwire’s network to supplement its bandwidth in high-traffic urban areas.